Monthly Archive for May, 2009

The feast is dominated by the big news from Ireland…a nearly 3000 page SUMMARY of a huge report on sex abuse in Catholic orphanages run by the Irish Christian Brothers, Sisters of Mercy, and a number of other religious orders over the past four or five decades. The Irish government was in cahoots failing to […]

This Sunday is NOT Ascension in New England. It is the 7th Sunday after Easter. So the Mass I am preparing for is a little bit different from most of the country, indeed, most of the world. But this Gospel is a good dialogue about what Ascension means even if it is not the Ascension […]

In 1964 I left Hawaii to join the Oratory in South Carolina. It was the only established house of its kind in the US. In those days we observed as a general rule silence at meals (there was, for better or worse, a reader and reading assigned). Religious holidays as well as secular holidays were […]

Philip Neri, 1515-1595, is much beloved by the spectrum of Catholics who dot the current landscape. He has always been appealing since he is genial, original, and demanding in his own sly way. He was a mystic who distrusted visions. (If you see the Blessed Virgin Mary, spit on her, he said. He was sure […]

The administration of such a good school strikes me so often as ministry…I suppose that is my category in life so…Care and sacrifice and professionalism combined and guided us through these past days and will certainly do so in the future. Such a ministry can be lacking even where one might expect it so in […]

Today Johanna Justin-Jinich, a Wesleyan junior, was murdered in the little coffee and snack shop in the corner of the University Bookstore. We were locked down for the afternoon as were, for a shorter time, the three elementary schools nearby. Security is still tight since the killer ran and nobody knows where he is. This […]

So the Gestapo guy says in all those B movies when the hero faces torture (or the same words to a lesser member of the cast who is about to be dispatched). Decades ago I got out an almanac to see what important events were happening the year of my birth, 1946. Mostly they were […]

Easter? Easter! Keep your eye on the prize, says the old hymn that inspired the Civil Rights movement. That hymn came out originally as Keep Your Hands on the Plow. Farmers like students are tempted to give up because spring is so lovely and who wants to work? Keep your eyes on the prize.